My first trial of the day was the operation of a foreign shower setup. Â The water was the appropriate temperature and the flow was fine, but I couldn’t actually get the water to come out of the shower head. Â I thought I had torsioned everything to just before it would break but the “on” mechanism was to turn the tap nozzle down and clockwise, mechanism I had never seen before. Â This tap combined with a door that was locked by pulling and rotating the handle a certain way to create the most confusing bathroom I’d ever used which admittedly isn’t a terribly high bar. Â I walked out to great the cast assembled on the porch and felt a tinge of jealousy.
The construction equipment in the corner is part of a project whereby James is going to add an impressive pond structure to the area in front of the deck.
We had breakfast in Invermere and for the first part of it I watched a dog and a girl of about 6 to 8 run back and forth in front of the shops across the way. Â The shops were generic small-townesque versions of what’d normally be a big box store combined with specialty shops with no visible support next to a seasonally closed theater. Â This was all down the block from a solar powered public garbage compactor. Â We dawdled away the afternoon making the kind of delightful palaver that comes from a clutch of people just familiar enough with what the other people do to ask interesting questions to people just noviced enough to only have tentative answers that bear factual accuracy but rarely the weight of experience.
Following this was dinner at a local restaurant where I had a chance to dive into the world of Canadian condiments.  Canadian Heinz ketchup is flavored with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup and seems to have more salt in it.  The rest of the table politely continued conversation as I tried successively larger blobs of the stuff on knife until I had enough to grasp the mouth feel a determine what I thought of the level of sweetness.  The next condiment to go under lingual microscope was HP sauce, a brown beef sauce that crowds out A1 and Worcestershire sauce.  While being slightly thicker than A1 it lacked both the body that comes from tomato puree as the main ingredient and a general lack of spiciness.  HP is probably the one best described as steak sauce whereas I’d call A1 more of a steak dressing.  The final cultural difference came over tipping when I insisted that 20% was standard in America and my imperial clout worked better after I reminded the table that we did insist the server return with condoms, handcuffs, and whipped cream of which he provided one.
That evening we went to a local bird sanctuary which was nicer looking than many of the national parks I visited.
While walking around the water’s edge Morgan found a stump he’d though go great in the hardscape that Beers was making. Â He decided to carry it back to the car and while trying to fit the unruly stump into his hatchback a police truck rushed by, stopped, and hastily reversed back to where we were. Â There were two cars present and I, as the odd American out, made my way to the vehicle that didn’t have someone shoving a stolen stump into it.
Policeman: Hey you!
Several of us: Yes?
Policeman: …Did you see a brown truck drive by?
Us: *Universal sigh of relief* No.
Morgan: Wait! Â Yes.
Policeman: Thank you! *zooms off*
Throughout the day, I’d been trying to get Beers picture. Â Victory came I had my 70-200 f/2.8 lens on my camera shooting across a ravine to get the sun on the trees. Â I dropped the camera slightly, got his picture at a reasonable distance, and recorded in slow motion his visage go from “it’s nice out here” to “he got me”.
The evening ended watching the ruby-throated hummingbirds feed. Â I did a rare thing and set my camera to full manual and was rewarded for my rapid knob-spinning.